A Tea Party with Death

Dear Tragically Beautiful Young Soul, You are cordially invited to a tea party with Lady Death on the 31st of October, 2010. Please arrive at the clover-green hill overlooking the West part of the city by 3 p.m. Lady Death does not tolerate tardiness. Therefore, leave your “fashionably late” mentality tucked in your wardrobe, behind those rags you would never dare wear in public. For that matter, please dress in your finest black attire. Hats, gloves, and pearls, though not required, are encouraged. Lady Death expects cleanliness and even modesty. Sloppy wretches, in her almighty opinion, do not deserve coffins. Lastly, bring nothing more than your perfectly coiffed self. Food is not necessary as Lady Death does not eat. Wine, too, would go unappreciated. Lady Death drinks nothing but tea and blood. Please keep the aforementioned at the front of your mind. Lady Death deserves your full concentration—and she will ensure that she occupies every thought crawling through your head. May slimy skin, dry veins, and decaying eyes be in your future.

Squirrel Spirit

By Luna LarkQuailBellMagazine.com

I should begin with an apology, Squirrel. I did not wish to take your life.

When the sky was green and the grass was blue, my mother used to read me Aesop's Fables. She'd sink into a deep velvet armchair and then unfold her glasses. Once bespectacled, she slowly turned the golden pages of her age-old tome so I could admire all the illustrations. I learned about the lion and the mouse, the fox and the crow, the frog and the ox...and many others.

But after hearing “The Sportsman and the Squirrel,” I never imagined I would become the Sportsman.

Flower Face

Bat Garden

The Quail's Heart

By Christine StoddardQuailBellMagazine.com

In a land neither here nor there roamed a stressed—some might say aggrieved--quail. If she had had thumbs, she would have twiddled them until they became raw. Instead, she had wings and she dared not twiddle them because she feared her feathers would fall out. That would not do for such a vain little creature. Thus she continued agonizing over the plight of motherhood with all of her feathers intact.

If the quail could have hired a surrogate mother, she would've made the phone call right away. But such an option does not yet exist for quails. And even if it did, they would have to begin using phones and printing their own phone book first. Otherwise, how would anyone get in touch with a surrogate?

The quail hated motherhood for several reasons. She did not look forward to her plump figure becoming even plumper. She also decided that, with a lifespan of only four or five years, it did not seem just that she should have to spend at least half of it tending to hungry, shrieking “goblins.” The quail did not want to find seed for anyone but herself. She figured she exercised enough as it was.

After bitterly carrying 18 little eggs inside of herself for months, the quail laid them as quickly as could. With her lady parts still sore, she promptly left the eggs to attend a retreat. Being a quail, she had no nails and therefore did not consider getting a “mani” or “pedi”--, though, being as vain as she was, the quail would've if she could've. But sitting and complaining about motherhood to other animal mothers instead of to a nail technician seemed plain fine to her.

Two-thirds a Love Poem

By Nick ChandlerQuailBellMagazine.com

If I could just touch your ankle.Like a light and hollowed breezewho’s breath tugs at your hem lineThen, in a slip, recedes back into the new world, over old and fresh-built homes as it remembers itself, cold and ephemeralhungry and lost, as it grazes more feetand laps at the misty heated windows